


as skittish and sentimental

by Indices



Category: The Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut
Genre: Alien Character(s), Character Study, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Past Relationship(s), gratuitous references to orpheus and eurydice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-27
Updated: 2020-01-27
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:21:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22431757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Indices/pseuds/Indices
Summary: He did not stay long enough to say goodbye to his statues, nor the towering bodies of the titanic daisies, their petals swaying in the breeze long after he was gone.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 5





	as skittish and sentimental

Constant was packing.

Salo wasn't. Salo was thinking about the eighteen million light-years that he still had left to go, and how exactly the going would go, after Titan.

He did not stay long enough to say goodbye to his statues, nor the towering bodies of the titanic daisies, their petals swaying in the breeze long after he was gone.

But he did turn back.

There was an Earthling legend about a young woman who died, and her musically-talented mate, the spawn of one of those long-dead Earthling gods. She died of snakebite, and he remembered asking Skip what snakebite would feel like. Remembered the man's shrug, the poorly-concealed annoyance, the _how would I know?_ Remembered wishing dearly that he could feel one for himself. (Not for self-destruction; not back then. Just to feel it.) In the story the woman almost came back from the dead, almost accomplished the impossible—if not for her mate, who could not resist the one thing that had been forbidden to him. At the time Salo had marveled at the irrationality of it. Savored it, really. Such things had been in short supply back on Tralfamadore.

(Perhaps he had been wrong. Perhaps they'd been in greater supply than he'd ever imagined. The message, and him, were two counts against them.)

Salo looked back, though he knew that he shouldn't have. It was not the only thing that had ever been forbidden to him. That was something that he had torn open, obliterated, discarded in totality. For nothing.

Or was it everything? Because—and he realized this as he thought it—up until the point that he stood frozen, staring conclusively at the yawning nothingness, that clear patch of sky where Skip had been standing seconds ago—he had been prepared for martyrdom. Prepared to shed his old self like the skin of a snake; to kill that self forever. To martyr himself for love.

In that moment, it had been his everything.

He looked back, and back, and into the made-up heart of that young man who loved only music, and a woman who was and would always be dead. Which was to say that Salo understood, at least a little. When he ripped open the message he had understood how the Earthling musician felt, and now he understood that impulse to turn back, the urge to make certain. It was more than self-sabotage.

It was— 

It was a sign that he had become truly irrational.

But Salo found that he did not mind so much, anymore. He wasn't sure if there was anything left worth minding. His heart was just as made-up as that of the young man. If he had a heart at all, he had left it on Titan. Down among the statues at the rectangular pool, and nestled against the leaves of the daisies, and sailing on the bluebirds' cries, and streaming out of the Solar System like a blow of Saint Elmo's fire. 

To return to Tralfamadore now seemed—impossible. For a moment he considered coming back to Titan, after the message had been delivered. Even if they spared the effort to hunt him down, it will have been worth it, perhaps, to have a little more time. But in a way that would be worse. Better to spend as much of life as possible in transit, so he would not spend eternity looking back.

At least on Tralfamadore there was hope. His current condition was proof enough that they could feel, wasn't it?

Just then, Constant emerged from the Taj Mahal. Salo turned towards his ship.

This time, he did not look back.

**Author's Note:**

> So basically, over the course of writing an essay for school, I caught a case of the feels for a character so obscure he only gets introduced at the end of the book. Go figure.


End file.
